The music industry is sucking up your data to create the next big hits
The data created by music streaming, buying and sharing is being sucked up in a giant vacuum by the music industry. Now, more than ever, this data is being used to influence the creation of music and discover the next “big hits.” So far, it’s been very effective—a rare silver lining of the music industry in the digital age.
Shazam, a now-ancient app that predates smartphones, is (surprisingly) one of the music industry’s best tools for picking out hit songs and emerging artists. According to a recent article in the Atlantic, “By studying 20 million searches every day, Shazam can identify which songs are catching on, and where, before just about anybody else.”
Why is the number of Shazam searches a better metric to measure by than, say, the number of song streams or YouTube plays? It shows interest; it shows that the listener is actively engaged and wants to hear more. Most likely, they want to hear that specific song again.
Shazam is just one tool used by the industry, the Atlantic reports: “Concert promoters study Spotify listens to route tours through towns with the most fans, and some artists look for patterns in Pandora streaming to figure out which songs to play at each stop on a tour.”
The article points out another company, Next Big Sound, which uses streaming and social media data— Spotify listens, Instagram mentions, etc.—to track emerging artists. They discovered that some measurements, “such as Facebook likes, are unreliable indicators of a band’s trajectory, while others have uncanny forecasting power.” One of the better measurements that the company cites is hits to a band’s Wikipedia page. Much like a Shazam search, a visit to a band’s Wikipedia page shows the desire to learn—and hear—more form the artist.
The Atlantic goes on to list a number of other data sources for the music industry. (For example, radio giant iHeartMedia uses HitPredictor, a service that “predicted 48 of the top 50 radio hits last year.”) Read the full article, or watch its companion video below via PBS. Let us know your thoughts.
